Of particular interest to me in the Jarvis/Arthur dialog is the illuminating concept that transparency is really the major feature that differentiates a story that the New York Times publishes versus a story published via a blog post. There’s also an artificial “definitive” quality in the traditional media that is exposed as false by web-based journalism (that is to say, information isn’t neatly disclosed in sequence and as a result it isn’t always possible to make a final judgment about the facts).

This is why I bristle at criticism of Wikipedia. I much prefer its transparent editing process to the opaque process used by traditional encyclopedia producers. I also like that it doesn’t make judgments (driven by profitability) about what merits inclusion and what does not – every obscure detail can be cataloged online. It’s also vastly more current at any given moment than any encyclopedia based simply on the length of time it takes to produce a printed work.